The two lucky events that helped Royal Challengers Bangalore's cause

In a game of slim margins, every chance or half-chance is potentially result-changing, and so it proved in the cliffhanger in Bengaluru. Royal Challengers Bangalore ultimately squeaked through by a run, but the result could have easily gone the other way had a couple of events not turned out the way they did.

Coincidentally, both these events involved Faf du Plessis. In the sixth over, with AB de Villiers on a run-a-ball 14, du Plessis made a fine attempt at mid-off to take a catch but failed to latch on to it. Du Plessis did finally take the catch to dismiss him, but by then de Villiers had made 25 off 19, which means he added 11 from five balls from the time he got the reprieve.

According to Cricday's Luck Index, which puts a run value to every lucky event in a match, had that chance - or half-chance - been taken, Royal Challengers would have scored seven fewer runs that they eventually did, and the end result could have been different. The run cost is calculated by allotting the extra deliveries batted by de Villiers to the rest of the batsmen in the team, and simulating the rest of the game to calculate how many runs they would have scored off those deliveries.

The other event is even more interesting. In the fourth over of the chase, the following happened, to quote Cricday's ball-by-ball commentary:

3.2 Yadav to du Plessis, no run, oh my word how has that missed? Shaping away from him and in fact it shaved the stump. At 141 kph, but the bails stay nailed on. Faf's lucky day. He was squared up and missed it, should have been bowled, but he's still there. Umesh has a wry smile.

Du Plessis was then on 5 off ten balls, and was eventually dismissed for five off 15. According to Luck Index, the other Super Kings batsmen would have scored six runs off those extra five dot balls that du Plessis faced. That means Royal Challengers were actually lucky that the stubborn bail refused to budge, given what happened in the subsequent deliveries to du Plessis.

Umesh Yadav was unlucky to miss out on a wicket off that ball, but for the rest of his team-mates, not dismissing a batsman actually helped their cause.